Short clarification requests regarding the following lores, which are granted by backgrounds and mentioned in the skill chapter as sample lores:
-Physical Science Lore granted by the electrician background
-Life Science Lore granted by the doctor background
As these used to be fully featured skills in Starfinder first edition, could we maybe get an explanation of what they are supposed to cover?
Right now they seem comparable to some very broad lore skills or class features with a custom lore skill that allows you to recall knowledge about everything (Bardic lore being an example).
Previously guidelines about lores indicated that they should be pretty narrow, undead lore is a pretty famous outlier here, which brings me to ask the question above.
As far as I can tell, Lore subtypes are intended to be fairly loosely defined.
I have been playing PF2 for several years and I couldn't tell you what a different GM is going to say is covered by Hunting Lore or Gladiatorial Lore.
What I have seen is in skill challenges, Lore subtypes are often listed as options for the skills available to use. So in SF2 Physical Science Lore and Life Science Lore are likely to be common Lore types used in skill challenges.
I do agree they are a bit too broad. They worked in 1E as they were full skills in the way we have Medicine, Nature, Arcana, Occultism, and Religion, where Lore skills would have been covered under the Profession skill. Problematically, we run into these problems:
Is Architecture Lore a physical science?
Is Astronomy Lore a physical science?
Is Carpentry Lore a physical science?
Is Engineering Lore a physical science?
Is Farming Lore a life science?
Is Herbalism Lore a life science?
Is Mining Lore a physical science?
Is Surgery Lore a life science?
Doctor could instead have Biology Lore or Surgery Lore
Electrician could instead have Electronics Lore
Gene Splicer could instead have Biology Lore or Bioengineering Lore
Another weird thing is that you can technically only recall knowledge (and earn income) with lore skills. So your electrician couldn't use Physical Science Lore to repair anything.
The way i currently intepret this is that the lore is there to give you the option to use Intelligence to indetify a plant because nature would use wisdom which doesn't make much sense in a modern world. I think its also a way to show that your character has a certain general knowledge about a broad topic. Lets say you want to be knowledgeable about all things tech but you play a soldier and you don't have enough skill increases to train Computer, Crafting, Thievery and Piloting. You loose out on being proficent in using the skill actions but you are at least informed about those topics.
But this is still weird because this means that Lore Skills are now broader versions of normals skills while they technically should be the oposite.
But i never really like lore skills anyway. So im hoping that the Starfinder Devs do something clever with them. Its cool to be able to use intelligence instead of other attributes but because lore skills auto scale you always have to be cautious on what you allow them to be use for. So they are either to usefull or never come up at all.
Herbalism already lets you identify a plant with Int. As I said above, Life Science can do everything Herbalism can do, which renders it null.
Also, Lore skills do not auto-scale. They only scale when you use the Additional Lore feat.
On a personal tangent, frankly I let Lore skills perform any appropriate action that encompasses the Lore. Cooking lets you make Crafting checks to create food items, for example. Also, I borrowed from Starfinder 1E and let Lore skills change their Mental stat appropriately, for example, letting a PC use Charisma for Lore Artistry, or Wisdom for Lore Labor or Lore Hunting.
moosher12 wrote: Herbalism already lets you identify a plant with Int. As I said above, Life Science can do everything Herbalism can do, which renders it null.
Also, Lore skills do not auto-scale. They only scale when you use the Additional Lore feat.
On a personal tangent, frankly I let Lore skills perform any appropriate action that encompasses the Lore. Cooking lets you make Crafting checks to create food items, for example. Also, I borrowed from Starfinder 1E and let Lore skills change their Mental stat appropriately, for example, letting a PC use Charisma for Lore Artistry, or Wisdom for Lore Labor or Lore Hunting.
True. But Lore skills are designed in a way that allows broader Lore skills to encompass more specialized ones. PF2e has both the undead lore and the vampire lore as a suggested lore. The more narrow your lore skill is the lower your Recall knowledge DC gets. (Because the skill becomes less usefull.)
But correct me if im wrong. Herbalism Lore is not part of Starfinder? Or have i missed a background which grants Herbalism Lore?
Not by specific name, but by compatibility, it's a valid choice. There are Lore skills available beyond those listed in the list presented in the Player Core/Core Rulebook as well. As you can invent them as needed.
For example, I have heavy doubts Accounting Lore would not be a valid choice in Starfinder 2E.
|
1 person marked this as a favorite.
|
Frankly I'd rather see Astronomy, Biology, Botany, Chemistry, Geology, Mathematics, Physics, etc Lores than just Life and Physical Science.
Even look back into Starfinder 1E, which coined them. They were core skills, not Profession skills.
Ok but you can make up any Lore skill. Having herbalism Lore printed in PF2e doesn't mean anything for Starfinder as long as it isn't specifically granted anywhere. I could decide to pick Pizza Lore and it wouldn't mean anything for the system as a whole.
That is my biggest problem with lore skills. You can only pick them on level up. Which means you need to know in advance if they are usefull. But there are pretty much infinte lore skills which makes it impossible for any GM to make sure that all of them are useful.
My workaround is to make sure that the lore skills, which are specifically mentioned by Backgrounds, have a use case. And then i will suggest a few good ones based on the adventure. But this is a lot of work and sometimes feels pointles.
So in general i appreciate a smaller selection of lore skills. I mean what are you really doing with accountig lore (besides earning income)? If you are lucky you can use this skill a couple of times. But you could also just level society.
This is what i liked about the SF1 Professions. They were more a collection of different skills. It allowed you to say: Im a bounty hunter and im good at bounty hunter stuff. It doesn't matter that im not trained in every skill.
But im getting off topic here.
As you said, a collection of different skills. That's frankly how I ended up running Lore.
You are right, however, that you can have more and less specific lore skills. But I still do not believe that Physical and Life Science are appropriate, because when you look at SF1E, Physical Science and Life Science each had a scope that is comparable to Nature, Arcana, Occultism, and Religion. They were full skills, they had a very large range. Which is to say, they should not be allowed to have their Starfinder 1E scope by the very nature of being Lore skills.
Let's look at Life Science for example. All of Nature, sans maybe fey identification, can be summed up in Life Science. That's much to broad for a Lore skill. It's broad to the point I cannot entitle a player a lowered DC, as it is to a point of broadness that it can be considered an exploit in the system. Get Additional Lore: Life Science, and you've got the grand majority of an auto-scaling Nature skill.
Physical Science, I can see more of an argument for. As Crafting only takes up the Engineering aspect of Physical Science. But even then, that's still broad enough to get a full skill like Piloting or Computers, rather than a Lore.
I would have prefer they just change the skills to retain from 1e edition. Having a physical science and life science skill works in a futur setting. It is science.
Much of Life science is covered by Nature. I think a case can be made for Physical Science as its own skill seperate from arcana, nature, occultism, and Religion to explain mundane phenomena, but I'm not sure what to call it, and Nature cannot be removed because of the Primal spell tradition.
I considered technology, but that feels like it is easily subsumed by Crafting. I also considered Science, but the problem is science would weirdly be missing life science and engineering, which is taken up by Crafting, Medicine, and Nature. Physical Science feels like it would be awkward without a Life Science counterpart.
Granted, Nature can potentially be renamed to Life Science. Which could pave a way for a physical science being added as a new skill. I think that could potentially be an acceptable solution, as Nature in a Pathfinder entry could refer to Life science when playing Starfinder, and vice versa.
|
1 person marked this as a favorite.
|
Not sure if anyone else has read the "shards of the glass planet" scenario yet but im even more confused now. It seems a bit random when Life / Physical Science works and when it doesn't. Im at the point where i would advocate towards removing it. It feels like a "remember Starfinder 1"-Thing
Recent threads in Playtest General Discussion
|
